I blog about the Canadian Premier League and Canadian Soccer. I also help out with @Canucks_Abroad

Jun 23, 2017

The #CanPL questions on my mind vol. 2

People seemed to like my last one so I decided to give you some more thoughts

Have there been any more concrete news about the CPL?

Since my last post, the only real news that we’ve gotten is that Sports Entertainment Atlantic got approval to build a temporary soccer stadium on Wanderers Grounds which means that a CPL team team in Halifax is almost a certainty now. Other than that we’ve got Paul Beirne doing the rounds on Canadian Soccer Podcasts giving some more tidbits on the vision for the CPL. You can listen to him on Under The Cosh here and on AFTN here.

What will player movement inside the league look like?

One of the things about the CPL that I’m really curious to see is how will players change clubs inside the league. I really hope players are given free agency from the start and that players aren’t traded between teams without their consent. I really don’t have a problem with players being traded in the NBA and the NHL because all those players make at least six figures, so even though it sucks to be traded they can at least afford to change cities. Now imagine if you are a player on a medium salary playing for Halifax and suddenly you are traded for a team in the GTA, financially that is a huge unexpected burden, and that without even mentioning being traded on your birthday just a month after signing with a club #inhumane. I hope they go for a more European approach where players are bought and sold between teams. and players have freedom to chose where they want to play.

How long after the league launch will a players union emerge?

Speaking of player movement, I’m curious to see if there will be a players union and and a CBA. Currently, both the NASL and the USL don’t have players unions but there is the MLSPU in MLS. I’m not really a fan of the MLSPU, I think they should’ve negotiated a better CBA during the last negotiations with MLS. I think that it is kind of inevitable that, eventually, the league will have a players union and a CBA. I’m curious how long will it take for the players to form an union and I’m curious to see if another union like the CFLPA or the MLSPU will help out during the beginning stages. I don’t know anything about the CFLPA so I don’t know if they are competent or not, but I think the MLSPU should have a vested interest in having a strong CPL players union with a good CBA.

Who is going to referee the games?

I always thought that PRO handled all referee nominations for MLS, NASL and USL and assumed they would probably handle the CPL refereeing but after checking their website I found out that the CSA actually handles the nominations for NASL and USL games in Canadian soil so I guess the CSA will handle the referee nominations for the CPL.

Will Mitchell Goldhar or Brett Wilson be part of any of the ownership groups?

For those who don’t know Mitchell Goldhar is the owner of the biggest Israeli soccer club Maccabi Tel Aviv and Brett Wilson was part of an ownership group that owned Derby County for a while and is still a part owner of the Nashville Predators. Since both are Canadian and have a connection with soccer I think it would make sense that both of them would be part of ownership groups of teams in the CPL. Of course this is pure speculation on my part and I have no inside info.

What will the media coverage of the league look like?

A few weeks ago John Molinaro lamented on twitter the lack of coverage that Toronto FC gets despite being the best team in MLS. I don’t think there will be much traditional media coverage of the CPL, newspapers are dying and if TSN and Sportsnet don’t pay that much attention to TFC, a team that they own, I’m not expecting they will care about the CPL. What I think will happen is that every team will hire freelancers to cover the teams on their own websites like most sports teams do these days or maybe some teams will forge partnerships to get some coverage like the Argos have done with the Athletic Toronto. I also hope that a good blogger community emerges like what happened with TFC and we get some new interesting voices and angles on Canadian Soccer.

Can we settle on a hashtag?

While writing and talking about it, I find it entirely reasonable to call it the CPL, but get that #CPL hashtag out of here. I’m on team #CanPL.